


A Light in the Dark

by stele3



Series: The Tether Series [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Autism, Canon Disabled Character, F/F, Gen, Jewish Character(s), M/M, Non-canon disabled character, OMC - Freeform, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Post-Season/Series 04, Slavery, anti-Semitism, compliant with Treasure Island, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 11:16:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14424252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3
Summary: “What,” he says, his voice soft and high, “what the fuck is that?”The sharp change in his tone draws the attention of Marielena and Rebekah as well and he takes a faltering step backward as if frightened to be the object of all their gazes. James starts to say. “It’s a menorah—”“I know what the fuck it is!” John shouts. “What the fuck is it doing here? Someone’s going to see, take it down at once!”-o-Many thanks to eufry on Tumblr for the sensitivity reading w/r/t Judaism and Jewish characters. Full disclosure: I am a goy, able-bodied, and white, and am writing a lot about Jewish, physically disabled, and non-white characters. If I fuck up in any way, please don't hesitate to let me know.I have included trigger warnings in the tags; if I've missed any of those, either, please let me know. Different installments of this series will have different warnings, so please pay attention to the tags. ALSO ALSO: this chapter (and further chapters) contain language that, while considered common usage at the time, are now seen as pejoratives. Some of that language is called out in the text but other examples are not.





	A Light in the Dark

_-Philadelphia, December 1722_

 

The first installment of Barlow’s promised fortune arrives at the start of December, ten pounds in total. Three go to the blacksmith for his labor and his silence, three disappear into Barlow’s pocket, and the last share of four is divided among the rest of them.

They each spend their windfall in predictable ways: Marielena on a fine rump roast that was butchered to Rebekah’s careful specifications; Rebekah in ways at first known only to her; James on tools for his workshop, thicker blankets for their bed, and books; Thomas on candles, a new lantern, and more books.

If only pages were mana, they would eat forever.

He buys enough of the latter that James uses his new tools to build a proper bookshelf for their front room, which he and Erik bring home in the cart that Erik uses to make their deliveries. Erik is a mulatto boy, thirteen years old, with a club foot who James and Thomas had first encountered hawking in the streets. He’d had little carved animals, rough but charming; but more, he’d had a bright and engaging manner about him, one that drew more business than his wares. Thomas had bought two figurines, a horse and a dog, with money that they could not afford to spend.

It was James, though, who had lingered and eventually asked the boy if he knew anything of carpentry.

Now Erik is his apprentice, or would be if not for the conditions of his birth. Erik’s mother is a slave; his father owns her, and thus Erik exists in a nebulous place somewhere between freeman and enslaved, as his father tries to decide if—in addition to being the kind of man that pretends his slave would _choose_ to be his mistress—he is the kind of man who would sell his own son. When he is not at home, Erik works in James’ shop and at night he sometimes even beds down in a small room in the back of the shop.

When pressed, James likes to gruffly point out that letting Erik sleep in the shop keeps away robbers, as if a highwayman might target the humble establishment of a local carpenter.

Their delivery attracts the attention of their neighbors, who emerge to watch even with fresh snow on the ground and dangerously cold nights ahead. The bandbox rowhouses of Addison Street, each neat and identical to each other in the Georgian style, are populated mostly by respectable workers: cobblers and milliners live to either side of them, with their landlady, the widow Mrs. Greenup, across from their door. The smallest home at the innermost depths of the alley is occupied by a young woman who Thomas suspects is someone’s kept and very pregnant mistress. She absorbs most of the gossip in their tightly-packed neighborhood, though Thomas would wager that his wedge of brick has drawn a certain amount of speculation.

Everyone seems quite friendly now, as James and Erik unload their cart. As Marielena is still at work it falls to Thomas to make pleasant, meaningless conversation for a period of time—at least, until the limping figure of John Barlow appears at the mouth of the alley.

“Ah, Mrs. Greenup, may I introduce you to Señor Barlow, Marielena’s brother.”

“Es _Barro_ , hello Señora. My English—not very good.” Barlow smiles winningly. On that first morning, Rebekah had cut his hair quite short and shaved off his tangled dark beard; some of the hair has grown back in the past three months, but he’s kept his face bare. The result is a very handsome young man with passably darkened skin, a wide smile, and a broken but charming grasp of English. Those who don’t stare at his missing leg cast him looks of a more admiring nature.

Mrs. Greenup appears willing to combine those two options. “Good afternoon, Mr. Barlow. You poor lamb, what ever became of your leg?”

Barlow’s grin doesn’t falter in the slightest. “You es so kind, Señora. Señor McGraw, how you say—?”

They conduct a kind of stage play, as Barlow relays the story of how he came to lose his leg, with Thomas acting as translator and occasional co-storyteller. James has relayed enough of the events leading up to and following Miranda’s death that Thomas knows the story to be fiction—though he would guess that anyway, from the tone of Barlow’s voice. The events are plausible enough: a fellow builder named Solomon Little had fallen into drink after his indecent wife left him, and in his stupor, he had knocked into Barlow’s ladder, sending him plummeting thirty feet to the ground. The leg had been too broken to salvage, leaving him without occupation and quickly abandoned by the faithless Spaniard lord who had contacted him. Solomon Little, in heartbroken contrition, had offered Barlow his life, but Barlow had asked only for the coin to travel north, where he hoped his baby sister and her husband might welcome him into their kindness and charity.

Watching him charm the usually-dubious Mrs. Greenup, Thomas can’t help but wonder what Barlow had looked like when he and James first met. He would wager that Barlow is less than thirty, which means he would have been in his early twenties. Was he like this, fresh-faced and friendly? If so, Thomas could imagine that James would have thawed in the same manner as Mrs. Greenup.

But Flint—Thomas still has no idea how Captain Flint would have reacted. If there is truly any difference between the two.

“Your pardon, Mrs. Greenup,” Thomas gently interrupts, “but I believe our expertise is needed inside.”

She smiles and flutters over his courtly manner, which Thomas dares to play up in her presence. It’s an excellent counterpoint to Marielena’s plainspoken piety and now to Barlow’s roguish charm. Between the three of them they might yet convince the rest of the neighborhood to overlook the oddness of their living situation.

Inside, James and Erik are fitting the interlocking pieces of the bookshelf together while Rebekah passes them tools when requested. The bookshelf is fairly plain at first glance but then James points out the _volute_ designs at the top that make the sides of the shelf look like slender Greco-Roman columns. It’s quite a lovely bit of woodworking and Thomas admires it openly.

Erik blushes under the attention. “That’s all due to Master Hamilton,” he mumbles, scuffing the bottom of his cane on the floor.

In reality it’s quite the other way around. James has a firm grasp of proportions and function, but style tends to elude him; it was only after he brought Erik on that his shop became well-visited. Towards the West end of town there is still demand for the hard, back-breaking work of building new homes, but in the shadow of Society Hill the residents can afford to commission a decorative chair for their front parlor, sturdily built but with some fanciful details that please the eye. Now that James has made a name for himself in furnishings he no longer goes to the West end, for which Thomas is eternally grateful: it was steady work but it sent James home hollow and exhausted.

He still earns enough to pay the lion’s share of their board, which Marielena supplements by cooking in the Green Gentleman public house. Occasionally Thomas will bring in a windfall by penning an article—under pseudonym of course, and never about anything particularly controversial—in the _American Weekly Mercury_ , but a particularly severe outbreak of the pox last year, in combination with the ongoing campaign led by Massachusetts Lt. Governor Dummer against the native tribes to the north, put a damper on the publishing industry. Thus, it is mostly James who keeps them in house and home, and a goodly portion of the credit goes to Erik.

“Se ve muy bien,” Barlow agrees, playing up the Spanish accent. “Ola, young man, your talent is straight from God!”

Kneeling on the floor with his back to Erik, James rolls his eyes. Barlow doesn’t look deterred in the slightest, instead thumping his way around James to offer Erik his hand.

Erik shifts his cane to his other side in order to accept the congratulations. There is a moment as they both become aware of each other’s infirmity; then another as they consider each other’s choice in walking aid; then another as they make eye contact again, their smiles slightly more real and far less polite.

Thomas spends all three of those moments watching James: he is still on the floor, looking back and forth between Barlow and Erik as he is _just now_ seeing all of their similarities.

Oh, James.

Once the bookshelf is up, Erik and James ride the cart back to the storefront on Market. Barlow deposits several items in what has become his designated corner by the fireplace, to which James avoids glancing with the studious politeness of a Navy man accustomed to close quarters, and which Thomas often stands over and peruses while taking his morning tea. To be fair, Barlow does not limit himself to that corner: he has left his peg leg in parts of the house that defy explanation, from the mantel above the fireplace to the spice rack in the kitchen, not to mention a random bedpost that he left leaning against the hall entryway—which James promptly tripped on and spent five minutes cursing Barlow by the name _Silver_ before he could be impressed upon to stop in case one of the neighbors heard him—and most memorably, an infant raccoon that Barlow had rescued from the snow, which did not live long but, even in its half-dead state, managed to wriggle free from its cocoon of blankets and crawl to the bottom of the stairs, where it frightened Marielena badly enough to send her shrieking back up to the second level.

He is, in short, a catastrophic housemate on the subject of cleanliness or order, yet wheresoever he finds the odds and ends that he brings home—and however he acquires them—they often prove damnable useful. That bedpost that so injured James fit perfectly into a commission that had been giving him terrible trouble. In fact, with his short stature and sharp, mischievous eyes, Barlow puts Thomas very much in mind of the mythological piskies of Cornwall, always tricking greedy merchants and nicking odd items.

Whenever Thomas catches himself thinking thus, he has to admit that he can’t blame the pirates of Nassau for accepting this man as their king. There’s something slightly otherworldly about him—one could believe that he saw the future or turned the weather.

His items stowed, Barlow departs again shortly after. Blacksmiths work in the morning so Thomas assumes that Barlow has another piece in the game yet to be revealed. James likes to fret about that sometimes, when he isn’t busy trying to pretend that John Barlow does not exist. He can’t seem to make up his mind whether Barlow’s presence or absence troubles him more.

It certainly does not bother Thomas, as he sets the sparse pieces of his collection to rights. There are the philosophers and advisors of old, alongside whatever cheap histories and religious texts can be scrounged from the colonial presses.

James returns shortly before sundown, followed quickly by Marielena. This time of year, all sane persons seek shelter at first glimpse of twilight. Marielena spends a very, very brief moment admiring the bookshelf before she begins to campaign for a larger spice rack. James groans. “I do need to earn money for my work.”

“Then cut this piece in half and give me the top.”

“Nooo.” Thomas steps forward to protectively spread his arms over his half-filled bookshelf.

“You don’t even own that many books.”

“Not _yet_ ,” both Thomas and James say together.

James has brought home some fine cod for dinner, payment received from a fisherman in recompense for repair to his window shutters. The three of them set about making fish stew for supper. Marielena relays a story of drunken idiots from the public house, which causes James to frown and fuss about her safety, something he does with enough regularity that Thomas wonders if Marielena purposefully winds him up this way in order to bask in the result. Her father died when she was a child and James is about the right age to fill the role; if their coloring had not been so different, Thomas would have suggested presenting them as father and daughter instead of a married couple.

Rebekah appears in the doorway just as true darkness is gathering, her hair tied back and tucked underneath a scarf. The style is too oddly specific to be accidental. Further, she carries a small bundle in her arms: an unevenly-shaped object wrapped in cloth that she shifts from one hip to another as she approaches Marielena for a kiss.

“What’s this?” Marielena asks, cocking her head at the object in Rebekah’s arms. “Did you finally buy something? Please tell me it’s something useful, not more books.”

While the rest of them have made no secret of how they spent their earnings, Rebekah has kept her own counsel in the matter. Now, however, Rebekah nudges aside the bowls and cutlery on the table to present her purchase: an ornate silver candelabra with nine branches, four to each side and one in the center.

Marielena frowns, but shrugs. “Useful enough, I suppose. It will give plenty of light.”

The sight of it catches on something in Thomas’ memory and he looks to Rebekah. “This is—I’m sorry, the name escapes me.”

“La menorá,” Rebekah answers. Her eyes are soft and distant as she looks at the candelabra. “Among my people, there is a story about this time of year. The details do not matter overmuch—but as all our stories go, we endured a dark time and so we light candles, one for each of eight days.” She pauses then actually lifts her gaze to Thomas. Eye contact is very rare and apparently rather painful for Rebekah, and Thomas grants her the fullness of his attention. “I would like very much to light it here.”

There follows a long discussion of the safeness or otherwise of this proposal. Experience has taught them all to mind hidden eyes. It is agreed that with the curtains drawn, only someone standing directly outside of their front windows could possibly tell the menorah from any other lit candle, of which there are many. A goodly number of Prussian and German immigrants have settled in the Philadelphia area, bringing with them their oddities: they put candles in the trees and on their doorsteps, and just last week Marielena came home speaking of a small clockwork pyramid she had seen being demonstrated on Market Street, powered by the heat of candles. An unusually-shaped candelabra could easily be dismissed as Christian of a lesser-known denomination, were someone mad enough to lurk outside their window in this cold.

On an excess of caution, James even ventures out into the night to casually stroll up and down the street—stargazing, something that he actually does enough in the summertime to be plausible—to ascertain that all the good people of Philadelphia have taken to their homes and shut their doors against the night. When he returns with the pronunciation that they are quite safe insofar as he can tell, Rebekah takes two candles from her pocket and sings something under her breath, then lights one candle in the fireplace and uses that one to light the other, affixing them both to what seem like very specific positions on the candelabra.

Watching, Thomas thinks of the precious few times that Rebekah has spoken of her family. He knows they died when she was quite young, before her incarceration at Bethlem Royal Hospital. By the time Thomas had arrived, she’d been a patient for some three years; together they had weathered another seven, and they’d spoken frequently of their lives before the hospital, as if by putting those memories to spoken word they could be better preserved. Thomas had carried the lion’s share of those conversations, a fact that he’d previously attributed to being much older than Rebekah before his imprisonment began.

Now he wonders if Rebekah’s reluctance to speak much of her family was tied less to her lack of anything to say and more indicative of her unwillingness to share this part of herself, even with Thomas, in their mutual hours of darkness. He finds he cannot fault her, considering the manner of her family’s demise: a man had owed her father money and instead of paying had accused him of theft, which was all too readily believed by the authorities. Her father had died shortly thereafter in St. Briavels, either of illness or violence. Put out into the streets, her mother and older brothers had followed him to the grave; only Rebekah, with her odd manners and occasional fits, escaped the same fate—though Bedlam was no escape at all.

No, Thomas cannot fault her for not speaking much about her family or her faith, yet still he wishes to know. And so he watches her light the candle and he listens to the murmured prayers, pleased to discover that there is still yet more to learn about her.

With the candles lit and pleasantly burning on the mantel, they sit down to eat supper together, though James casts frequent glances at the door. Surprisingly, so does Rebekah.

The reason for this becomes quite apparent upon Mr. Barlow’s eventual return. They have by now finished eating and retired from the table to huddle close to the fireplace. Thomas is reading by candlelight: Webster’s _The White Devil_ , a truly bloody and debauched play. Marielena is ostensibly sewing but she pauses to cross herself every time someone in the play meets a gruesome end or commits adultery, which means that her progress has been very slow indeed. Once the first few pages had revealed the work’s utter lack of literary value, Thomas began to act out the parts, pitching his voice high for the seductive and secretly deadly Vittoria, and summoning James to his shoulder in order to read the part of the villainous Ludovico.

In all it is a most pleasant evening, interrupted at length by a gust of cold from the door as Barlow enters, his teeth chattering loud enough to hear across the room.

“F-f-fucking _Christ_ it is c-cold out,” he exclaims, earning a frown and another sign of the cross from Marielena. “Why the _fuck_ did you come to someplace so c-cold?”

“To escape the possibility of being discovered by the villains and murderers of my past life,” James says, finally relaxing enough to lean against the mantel. “I’ll let your presence be sufficient commentary on how successful _that_ turned out to be.”

Shaking back his mane of snow-frosted hair, Barlow smirks at James. “C-come now, have you forgotten all your readings? ‘It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to f-fly from other men's badness, which _is_ impossible.’ Besides, I was only ever _partly_ a villain.”

“Oh indeed?” James asks, apparently not as taken aback as Thomas to hear _Meditations_ come out of Barlow’s mouth. “And which part of you has lived the life of a virtuous man?”

Turning to face them, Barlow triumphantly unfurls both his hands in the direction of his missing leg. “A true shame that they took it from me, you see, for I had more virtue in my pinkie toe than—”

He cuts off, for his gaze has landed on the mantelpiece and the menorah. The whole of his body jerks once, hard, then goes still.

“What,” he says, his voice soft and high, “what the fuck is _that_?”

The sharp change in his tone draws the attention of Marielena and Rebekah as well and he takes a faltering step backward as if frightened to be the object of all their gazes. James starts to say. “It’s a menorah—”

“I know what the fuck it is!” John shouts. “What the fuck is it _doing_ here? Someone’s going to see, take it down at once!” Rebekah straightens in her chair and John’s gaze alights on her, narrowing. “You—did you fucking talk them into this? Jesus fucking Christ, you _are_ a lunatic!”

Barlow starts towards the mantel and Rebekah stands up, then turns and in one smooth motion seizes the back of the chair that she was just seated in, spins around, and slams that chair into Barlow’s chest, knocking him to the floor.

The chair clatters after him. He is only prone for a single stunned moment before he surges upward with murder in his eyes.

Fortunately, by then James has moved between them and actually seizes Barlow as he starts forward. Thomas does not hold Rebekah—when roused she cannot tolerate being touched, even by Marielena—but he stands next to James and struggles not to remember the hulking brute named Bones who Rebekah had taken to the ground with nothing but her teeth.

Now she looks less inclined to attack, but she does rock in place very slightly, her eyes fixed on the floor. Thomas does not think for one moment that she cannot discern Barlow’s position in the room nonetheless.

Marielena stands on the far side of the table, her sewing clutched to her chest.

James murmurs, “Are you alright?”

“ _No_ , I am not alright. I don’t know what she said to convince you of this course of action, but if any of our kindly neighbors spot that _thing_ on our mantelpiece, you can expect in short order to find yourselves without a fucking home, at the very least of all possible outcomes!”

“They are not going to see. We have examined the windows from the outside, there was no line of sight to the menorah. Do you actually think that I would so recklessly endanger us all?”

Barlow laughs, a brittle sound. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

As they speak, Thomas lifts both of his hands into Rebekah’s line of sight to the floor. She does not cease rocking, but her head turns slightly, so he waggles the left one back and forth then puts out his right fore and middle fingers. Her hands are fisted in stress but after a moment she manages to reply by sticking out her right pinkie.

Barlow, meanwhile, has calmed slightly, though he remains adamant that the menorah must be put out and taken down. “Why take the chance that one errant gaze could threaten so much? Have you not learned from your own history, Captain? Have you?” he adds, and though Thomas does not look over his shoulder he can tell from the shift in Barlow’s voice that the question was directed at him. “This is simply a needless danger.”

Rebekah makes her right hand into a blade and chops down. The gesture is unmistakable, even to someone who didn’t spend several years creating a signed language by which to communicate when words will not cooperate.

“Mr. Barlow,” Thomas says. “I understand your concerns, and I assure you that we have taken measures to limit the possibility of gossip. In either case, Rebekah has requested this of us, and we have chosen to grant her request.”

“Oh well by all means, let’s coddle the fucking lunatic!”

Spinning, Thomas fixes Barlow with the coldest gaze he has ever leveled on someone who wasn’t his own father. “Say that word one more fucking time and you can go back out and freeze to death in the snow, be damned to your promise of riches.”

Barlow draws up short, his eyes flashing with anger, fear, and no small amount of hurt. In the time since he arrived Thomas has worked to befriend him, negotiating a path around the mountains of painful history, for his own sake as much as for James: in recounting Barlow’s past misdeeds—intended as warnings to distrust but more frequently laced with deep fondness—James has revealed a fair number of his own, dark things that must be pulled from him if ever he is to breathe easy again. And Barlow is a wily negotiator in his own right, burrowing into the fabric of their lives. Marielena has laughed more in the past three months than Thomas has heard in four years of her acquaintance, Lady Greenup has not raised their boarding costs on account of their kindness to an invalid, and James, well. Right now, he looks almost as frightened as Barlow, though he holds his tongue.

Barlow visibly notes James’ silence and wavers. Thomas does not. Be damned to it all if he must, for Rebekah’s sake.

For a few heaving breaths Barlow doesn’t move—then he swears violently and yanks the chair on the floor upright. Sitting in it, he folds his coat around himself and crosses his arms over his chest. All the while his gaze remains fixed on Rebekah.

For her part, Rebekah pulls another one of the chairs around the table over and sits down in front of the hearth like a sentry, facing Barlow, but with her eyes still fixed on the ground next to him. She does not rock in place but Thomas can tell by the fretful twisting of her fingers that she wants to.

Glancing at one another, Thomas and James slowly regain their places. Thomas retrieves the fallen book, making a mournful expression at the damaged spine; regardless of its quality, he can never bear to see literature mistreated thus. Resuming their recitation seems improbable, given the level of tension still sparking in the air, so instead Thomas sits by the mantel and pretends to read quietly to himself, while James attempts a casual lean against the back of his chair and mostly succeeds in looking constipated. Marielena sits, as well, though she doesn’t attempt to disassemble and instead watches the silent standoff nervously. She does not much care for conflict.

The candle on the menorah burns down and down and down. When it finally goes out, Barlow stands up and crosses to the mantel. Rebekah does not stop him. Jerking the menorah down, he dumps the remains of the burned-down candles into the fireplace, then places it on the cloth that Rebekah laid out.

Only then does he look at Rebekah again. “Are you quite fucking satisfied?” he demands.

She looks like she’d like to hit him with a chair again, or worse; but she refrains. Huffing, Barlow helps himself to some fish stew and eats in stony silence, his eyes on his food and nowhere else.

-o-

The wind shifts southerly and grows treacherously cold. The brick of their bandbox is well-suited to the climate, but still the ice finds its way through cracks around the windows, chasing them in through the doorway. The small room, likely intended for servants, that Thomas and James share on the first floor behind the narrow staircase is by the warmest in the house, likely because they have but one small window to the outside. In their larger room upstairs, Marielena and Rebekah take to burning enough candles for warmth that Rebekah’s menorah might very well go unnoticed.

More often than not, Thomas wakes to find James wrapped about him and the blankets pulled almost over their heads. These days that welcome embrace also includes the press of James’ sex against his hip. Physical intimacy had not returned to them quickly after their reunion: for all that they had both clung to the memory of one another in their time apart, the physical reality came with many complications, both emotional and physical, which conspired to curb their desire.

Then one day James had come up behind Thomas while they were in the fields, for once separated from the watchful guards by a row of poplar trees, and rested his forehead against the back of Thomas’ skull. The heat of his breath on Thomas’ neck had shook the dust from both their bodies and they’d tumbled to the ground and made love in the dirt, the blue sky above and the smell of green things all about them.

Now Thomas readily moves his hips back against the heat and hardness of James before he even fully wakes. James is still breathing deeply, his eyes closed, but his arms tighten around Thomas and he grinds his hard cock against Thomas’ arse. They’re both in nightshirts and it’s easy enough to reach back and brush the cloth upward far enough to take James in hand.

James twitches, his eyelids moving but remaining closed. “Cold,” he mumbles.

“Mmm, apologies, my love.” Thomas does not pause in his ministrations and shortly James is gasping and moving against him in earnest.

Thomas parts his thighs and James slides down the bed to press his spit-covered cock between them. They both groan as James begin to thrust. Thomas wishes they had something slick enough to further their way to full union but lamp oil is a premium this time of year, so instead he licks his own hand and rubs the head of James’ cock every time it bobs between his legs.

Soon enough there’s sweat and the bead of not-quite-come to further their cause and James is kissing his neck. He _remembered_ that, after years apart, and perhaps that should feel like less of a miracle, yet Thomas cannot help but find it thus. Someone else in the world knows the intimacies of his body and cares enough for his pleasure to seek them out, despite a thousand voices of church and government and family—both blood and imagined, for Thomas knows without asking the condemnation of Admiral Hennessey still haunts James—which would call this tenderness a sin.

Yet as James rises up onto one elbow and grips Thomas’ hip to drive against him, Thomas feels the same way he did in the fields of Savannah: like Adam and Eve, like they are the first two beings to ever join their bodies as one, even if at the present moment that union is only a facsimile. It is _sacred_ , what they are doing, and Thomas will hear nothing to the contrary.  

James bites at his throat and Thomas pants, “Don’t—you _rapscallion_ , I haven’t a cravat to my name, I can’t cover up—”

His words dissolve to a moan as James begins to _suck_. Thomas arches helplessly, his hand slipping upward to grasp his own cock. James quickly moves to replace that grip with his own, pulling hard and fast then slowing when Thomas makes a protesting noise in the back of his throat. James has always needed a nudge towards gentleness.

In recompense for the softer touch, Thomas slides a hand over the top of James’ head, scratching along his scalp. The hips behind his stutter then shove harder against his own, as if he were truly fucking Thomas. He has done so plenty enough times in the past, and Thomas has returned the favor as equally.

Now Thomas turns his head and murmurs, “God, your face when I fuck you. That look in your eyes kept me alive. James. Your _eyes_ when I am fucking you, I would swear that you are looking at—at a holy relic—”

“Fuck,” James gasps, sounding gratifyingly overcome. “I was, I _am_ , Thomas, I want—”

“I know.” Dropping his hand back between his thighs, Thomas catches the head of James’ cock on a hard upstroke and squeezes it gently in his palm, drawing out another moan so pleasant that he does it again. “I want—James. I want to fuck you again. I want to get you on your back and God, your _thighs_. Your bloody thighs, James.”

James laughs softly, still thrusting. “You’ve said, before.”

“Your _thighs_ ,” Thomas gasps, gripping one of them in his hand. “I want them around me, James.”

“ _Shhh_ ,” James hisses even as he spills between Thomas’ legs. Because he is not aware of The Plan, James is politely quiet as he comes; Thomas is just quiet enough to not be heard by the ladies upstairs or anyone else closer than their front room.

The occupant of the front parlor does not move for some time, long enough that they have proceeded to soft kisses and quiet pillow-talk, and James appears to draw no correlation between their previous activities and the sharpness of the thumps traveling from their front room to their kitchen and back. James is not a stupid man by any measure, but a childhood marked by loneliness had drilled into his mind the concept of his own undesirability.

At the moment Thomas cannot bring himself to correct that terrible misconception, as it plays right into The Plan. He merely waits.

At length the thumps in the front rooms—which probably resound much louder than anything Thomas and James have been about this morning—break into James’ fogged awareness. He frowns down at Thomas, still petting his hair. “He’s quite worried about Rebekah’s candles.”

Which…is not wrong. Thomas feels no guilt for not correcting his misreading of the source of Barlow’s morning grumpiness, either. “Do you share his concerns?”

Sighing, James stretches out next to Thomas on his side, his head propped on his elbow. “I do not deny the validity of those concerns. Even here, a recognizable symbol of the Jewish faith could be met with violence—or it could merely act as a beacon for attentions which might then alight on other, more dangerous secrets in this house.”

His meaning cannot be mistaken, not with their bedclothes still dampened with their pleasure, nor is he entirely wrong. Their own history proves it such. Thomas, who so radically miscalculated all those many years ago, spends some time staring at the ceiling and playing with the ends of James’ hair, grown long and trailing against his neck.

Eventually he says, “As he was to you, so she was to me. A light in the dark, a companion, a partner.” The memory of Miranda’s smile rises up before his mind and Thomas shuts his eyes a moment to ward it off. James’ fingers tangle with his; he sees her, too, perhaps much more clearly. They spent ten long years together on New Providence Island, longer than Thomas and Miranda’s marriage, much longer than Thomas and James had even known one another let alone been lovers.

But Thomas had not been alone for those long years, either; Rebekah has been with him. He says, “If it were not for Rebekah, the lie given out about my death in Bedlam might have become reality. Never once, in the entire time that I have known her, has she expressed passionate views about anything that did not include Marielena; if this is so important to her, then I cannot bring myself to do anything but support it in full.”

James presses his lips together but nods. He possesses no great affection for Rebekah, not as with Maria, yet they share a bond of companionship as two individuals capable of wholly unique levels of violence. Thomas does not like to dwell on their escape from the plantation: it was a night of smoke and frenzy, the former initiated by Marielena and the latter carried through by James and Rebekah. James, of course, had the training of both the Royal Navy and life aboard a pirate vessel to guide him. Wheresoever Rebekah learned to fight, Thomas cannot say; he only knows that she is nearly as deadly as James and twice as savage.

James fights to win. Rebekah fights to kill. The result is usually the same.

Were they on opposite sides of a battle, Thomas honestly does not know who would win. United by their protective instincts towards Thomas and Marielena, they seem to innately recognize a counterpart. Thus, while they are not friends and are like to never be, having too much ambivalence towards the parts of themselves that they recognize as shared in one another, they respect each other deeply and keep careful watch over the fence between their anger. Rebekah never comments on the amount of money that James—and Thomas—spends on books, and James never casts askance eyes at Rebekah’s fits and waggling hands. These are the ways in which they live with their internal darkness, and they accept its presence in each other without a word spoken aloud.

Sometimes Thomas desperately envies that ability in them both. He enjoys navigating through a maze of words, but it takes a great deal longer than a single glance and nod.

And so, the menorah returns to the mantel that night, but whatever fight any of them anticipated on the subject does not materialize. Barlow is not home, nor does he return until well after the candles, which accumulate in number every night, have burned all the way down.

“He says he is keeping watch,” Marielena reports to Thomas on the morning after the fourth night. Sometimes she can get an answer out of Barlow where the rest of them fail.

That means he staggers in half-frozen, his body quaking with the effort not to show how cold he feels. They’re only halfway through the Hanukkah week, apparently, and while James refuses to openly fret he does express concern to Thomas that Barlow might catch his death whilst holding unnecessary post out in the street each night, which is as close to fretting as James allows himself.

This, in turn, prompts Thomas to have a _tête-á-tête_ with Rebekah.

He calls the meeting to order with their customary discretion: they survived three years of Bethlem together by learning to communicate in ways other than speech. Oh, they had conversed plenty, as was encouraged by the administration, who enjoined that regular interactions with members of the opposite sex might well prove the remedy to their disease. Yet underneath those spoken interactions they hid meaning in their hands and eyes.

So, when Thomas sits at the kitchen table, holding his teacup with both elbows propped casually on the wood, Rebekah knows precisely what he means.

They dawdle there as James and Marielena make their way out the door to work. Barlow is already gone, attending to his contacts at the smithies in preparation for their next installment of gold. With people moving outside the windows frequently, no one kisses their love goodbye, but Marielena kisses Thomas’ forehead and James taps the table near Rebekah’s elbow, and all is understood. James offers Marielena his arm and they walk out the door as husband and wife to face the world.

In their absence, Thomas sips his tea.

Rebekah sets her teacup down and sighs, folding her arms in front of her. “Marielena thinks we should not fuck anymore.”

“Again?” From the first moment that she had lifted her gaze from her laundry basket and found Rebekah’s eyes already fixed on her, Marielena has been deeply conflicted about their relationship. Her god, apparently, does not approve; technically neither does Rebekah’s god, but on that subject there seems to be significant room for negotiation. “She has said this before; she’ll change her mind.”

Rebekah shrugs unhappily. “It does not matter to me whether or not we fuck. To know her is enough. But it matters very much to her, and I do not like to see her deny herself happiness.”

“Shall I speak to her about it?”

“I have asked James already. She listens to him.”

“That she does.” Marielena tends to view Thomas as a troublesome younger brother to be ordered about, despite the inversion of their ages; but James, she reveres in the soft, shy way of a makeshift daughter.

They study one another. Or, well, Thomas looks at her hands and her shoulders and her hair. Looking Rebekah directly in the face is to be avoided at all costs in delicate moments.

Eventually she says, “It will be very cold tonight.”

“Indeed,” Thomas says, surprised that she has introduced the subject that forms the core of his inquiry. He moves his cup towards the mantel, where the menorah sat last night.

To his further surprise, she rests one hand on the table and turns it palm-up, asking for his help. Her fingertips point in the direction of Barlow’s pile of flotsam and jetsam in the corner—or, the origin point of the flotsam and jetsam now strewn about their home.

Thomas lightly drums his fingers on the table. _I don’t understand_.

Picking up her spoon, she stirs her tea, then taps it three times against the rim. Which mean…a speech? A conversation? She wants him to speak to Barlow and convince him to make terms with the menorah’s presence in their home.

Thomas moves his teacup to where James had been seated for breakfast, but Rebekah brings two fingers down. No, this is something only Thomas can do.

Lifting his teacup towards his mouth, Thomas speaks without moving his lips; it was a skill they both picked up, for when gestures would not suffice to communicate their meaning. “How on Earth do I go about doing that?”

She answers over the edge of her own cup, also without moving her mouth in the slightest. “Elizabeth.”

They both take a sip of tea, regarding one another. Thomas blinks once then tips his cup to his right. The corner of Rebekah’s mouth quirks.

-o-

As instructed, Thomas endeavors to be out late inquiring after work at the printing shop of one Mr. Thomas Denham. While this does not result in immediate employment, it proves rather fruitful: Mr. Denham is in the process of sending to London an exceptionally bright and promising young man named Benjamin in the hopes that he might secure and retrieve to Philadelphia the equipment necessary to establish a second newspaper in the city, to rival the _Mercury_. Despite his eagerness to help, Thomas hesitates to lend too much aid in fear of revealing his true identity—that is, until Mr. Denham candidly reports that he came to the Americas to escape creditors and Benjamin is himself a fugitive after having fled an apprenticeship in Boston. Still Thomas withholds his title and history, but he gives the young man as much advice as he can, being ten years removed from London city. He departs the printing shop with the promise that if young Benjamin succeeds at his task, he shall certainly send word to Thomas and make him a partner in the business.

It is enough to put spring in his step as he made his way home, despite the bitter cold of the air. The streets lacked their usual hubbub of business as the city’s residents departed for home early wherever possible: last night the river had nearly frozen solid and there was talk of wolves moving into town, driven by starvation in the early chill.

Despite these perhaps-fanciful whispers, the only starving predator that Thomas finds lurking on their street is John Barlow, who rests in the doorway of a bandbox at the end of their alleyway that has stood vacant for some time after the roof partially caved in. The family who lived there moved out and no one has undertaken the perilous climb onto the steep rooftops in order to make the dwelling habitable again. In fact, Thomas made this very home the subject of an article he wrote for the _Mercury_ , arguing that the governor must step in to establish building regulations. Besides the safety issue, empty lots such as this create a public nuisance as they attract stray animals.

Seated on the steps up to the front door and framed by the dirty brick, Barlow certainly looks the part. He has endeavored to play Marielena’s brother as a harmless and good-natured invalid, if not entirely respectable, yet endlessly grateful for the charity of his sister and her husband. Right now, however, he sits glaring down the street at the front windows of the little bandbox they call home. From this vantage point, James appears correct in his assessment of their risk: there is little to see except a slight flicker of candlelight diffused by the curtains, indistinguishable from any other window on the street.

That does not appear to have dissuaded Barlow, judging by the darkness of his expression.

“Good evening,” Thomas says.

That earns him a sharp twitch and a quick rearrangement of Barlow’s face into something more pleasant—and far stupider. “Señor McGraw, buenos tardes. ¿Que tal tu día?”

Taking a chance, Thomas lifts an eyebrow and says, “I think we’re quite safe from prying eyes and ears, Mr. Silver. Unless you’d like to perform for the crows.”

At the mention of _that_ name, the darkness falls back over Barlow’s expression like a curtain dropping…except the pleasant façade is the curtain, and this underneath. Or so Thomas thinks. He would dearly like to know what Barlow looks like when there is no one watching—and perhaps that explains his hypervigilance against all possibility of discovery. Whatever exists underneath his many different layers of performances and names and faces, Thomas cannot yet say.

Allowing himself to drop the role of affable yet unnotable commoner, Thomas straightens. During his first few months at the plantation he was regularly beaten for “adopting airs,” though the punishment was never as severe or extensive as any that James received in the Navy; it had taken Thomas far too long to realize that his very posture bespoke that of a gentleman, and so he forced himself into an artificial slump, sagging with proper deference as befitted a lowly prisoner. In Philadelphia he is neither prince nor pauper, and thus holds himself at a midway position that nonetheless feels quite awkward on shoulders accustomed to uprightness.

Now he lets his spine lift and he gestures along the road as formally as a proper Earl inviting an intimate to join him for a stroll in Regent’s Park. “I thought to stretch my legs before we fully lose the light. Would you care to join me?”

Barlow does, of course, likely too intrigued by the shift in both their personas to do otherwise.

Thomas leads them down Addison to Ninth and most casually turns north. Beyond her cryptic instructions this morning, Rebekah has left him to guess at her intent; but it isn’t precisely hard. As they walk, he inquires, “Have you yet observed any gossipmongers at our window?”

“Oh, just a few priests flinging holy water about and calling for an _auto de f_ _é_ from all in your house, but none of you seemed to take any notice so I said a few _Ave Marias_ and sent them on their way.”

Glancing sideways, Thomas lifts an eyebrow. “I meant that sincerely. I do not know how you received the impression that we are all four of us utterly blind to the dangers of discovery.” Barlow makes no reply, seemingly intent on navigating the rough brick sidewalk with his crutch, so Thomas continues. “Maria and I have been managing the neighborhood’s opinion of us for some time, I assure you. To be sure, no aid will come from Rebekah on that quarter, or James—he was never graced with social airs. I think half the conversations in which I’ve ever seen him engage, he visibly wished nothing better than to escape, and how he persuaded a ship of pirates to follow him, let alone a _fleet_ , remains a mystery. Perhaps you can illuminate me?”

Barlow snorts. “Mostly he was the only one of us who could fucking _sail_ , and he fought like a demon. First time I ever saw him, he beat a man to death with his bare hands for challenging his captaincy.”

It’s as though the next brick shifts slightly underneath Thomas’ foot. He does not stumble but there’s a brief pause before he says, “Were there many such gladiatorial struggles for dominance? I had been given to understand that pirates operated on a democratic system.”

“Well, that particular fuck had been set up by _another_ captain, Flint’s main rival in Nassau. Most the others were smarter about it—there wasn’t a man who could beat him in a fight, pirate or otherwise. They used to say he had the blessing of a—”

He cuts off, parting from Thomas’ side briefly to navigate around a pile of horse droppings. Thomas mentally writes another article to the _Mercury_ on the subject of offal and vermin before he prompts, “A blessing from whom?”

“Hm? Oh, the sea itself. When he moved about the deck it was as if he could walk into a wall and it would open at his command. But he talked, too. He hated the men, and did not shy from letting them know it—”

“ _That_ sounds familiar.”

“—and yet he could convince them of almost anything. Most of them hated him, too, but they followed him because—he knew the way. Not just at sea, either. He talked about his vision for Nassau and we all believed him. Though, I suppose it was _your_ vision, first.”

That brings a smile to Thomas’ face. They’d been such idealistic fools, yet he cannot feel regret for any of their dreams, no matter how dark their results; one should never regret good intentions. “It was very much ours by the end, though I confess he did take quite a bit of convincing.”

They walk a little further in silence before Barlow asks, with casualness so poorly feigned as to be laughable, “What was he like, when first you met him?”

Thomas does laugh, then, and shakes his head. “ _God_ , I swear to you I almost died on the spot. I had been expecting the admiralty to send me a greying veteran, conservative enough to curb my radical ideas, and instead they sent me this—this golden creature with the sharpest tongue you ever heard. I nearly suspected them of sending him to ferret out my predilections, but he was so very _proper_. He had to be, of course—no son of a carpenter could have risen so far if he was seen to morally falter.”

Silver looks over at him, apparently no longer concerned about the stability of his crutch. “Son of a carpenter?”

“Yes,” Thomas answers, and how have they actually gone this long without discussing James? The subject—clearly a favorite for Barlow as well—eases the remaining tension between them as they walk.

By now the shadows have grown long. There is space yet between the buildings for the sun, even low in the sky, to cast its warmth; here on the outermost edge of Society Hill, there are still empty lots, cleared of trees but not yet occupied by any structure. To his credit, Governor Penn has firmly demarked the lines of future street corners with posts and stones even where the buildings thin out. For they most part they follow a grid plan in the Greco-Roman tradition. Thomas wholeheartedly approves.

Once they turn off of Ninth Street onto Spruce, the brick sidewalk ends and they descend into the packed dirt thoroughfare. Barlow sighs with relief, clearly accustomed to navigating less-civilized terrain, and lifts his head. He immediately frowns and glances sideways at Thomas. “When you told me to go freeze to death, was that a command you now intend to see fulfilled?”

“I didn’t actually mean that,” Thomas says quickly.

“Yes you did,” Barlow answers without acrimony, peering at the makeshift cemetery in the lot ahead of them. Most of the markers are wooden, and a few look quite fresh. “Is there an open one for me?”

“I have no idea. I frequently walk this way, it’s quiet.”

“I should fucking hope so. A noisy cemetery spells trouble for all. Is there no church?”

“Not here. The nearest is Gloria Dei on the riverfront—they hold all the services in Swedish, I believe, and their cemetery mostly serves the same. This lot came about from the necessity of pox death last year, and as such it holds a variety of persuasions.”

Thomas has timed it rather perfectly, if he does say so himself: they round a chestnut tree on the south-east corner of the cemetery and pause before a grave covered with fresh green grass. It is one of the few marked by a proper stone, and on the stone is etched a six-pointed star.

Barlow looks at it and says nothing. Taking his silence as enough of a prompt, Thomas elaborates: “A merchant by the name of Levy applied to have his infant son buried here. I believe the governor is still in the process of granting the request officially, but Levy and several other men of the Jewish faith have friends among the governor’s secretaries, who endeavored to look the other way.”

There are other graves surrounding that of David Levy, aged 1 year, of which all are less obviously marked yet still clearly separated from the others nearby marked with Christian crosses. Barlow glances over them all, his face stoic. “I suppose this is intended to convince me that my fears are unfounded?” he asks at length. “Because a field full of dead Jews does not advance your case as much as you might hope.”

“A field full of dead Jews, properly interred by their own kin, absent watchful church, granted thus by several of the governor’s closest familiars, truly does nothing to sway your opinion?”

“All people are good from afar.” Something about that sentence, and the way Barlow’s mouth twists as he says it, makes Thomas wish Rebekah was here. It has the sound of something that still needs translation.

“May I posit, then: I have survived Bethlem Royal Hospital, transportation across the Atlantic on a prison ship, three years in a slave plantation, zealous overseers and a misguided reformer, starvation, illness, my father, my sister, and your former bosun. Rebekah and Marielena could give you a similar accounting, and you already know most of what James has to say. We are nothing if not a troupe of people proven incredibly difficult to kill. If the residents of Addison Street care to have a go, what have we to fear from them that is so much greater than what we have already endured?”

“But why is it _worth_ enduring more? Why court more suffering when it could easily be avoided?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Rebekah that. Though I’ll request that you be a little more diplomatic in doing so—I wouldn’t really cast you out into the snow, it would break James’ heart, but Rebekah might.”

Barlow’s face twists further, though whether at the mention of Rebekah’s propensity for violence or James’ heart is unclear. Turning away, he gazes out at the cemetery, and Thomas elects to let him stew for a few minutes, as he himself is preoccupied with thought. Neither he nor James—nor, he would wager, anyone in the world save for Barlow himself—knows the full measure of what pains and pitfalls have befallen John Barlow or Silver or whatever _nom-de-guerre_ he chose. From the stories James has relayed, Silver doesn’t sound like a cowardly man.

And yet the prospect of _this_ —being discovered with a Jewish symbol openly displayed in his home—reduces him to terror and the certainty of not only discovery, but of swift retaliation from an outside source. It speaks to some past trauma, Thomas thinks, one that he has perhaps not had to face before this exact moment arose.

“God _dammit_ ,” Barlow suddenly bursts out, striking the post with the heel of his palm and yanking Thomas’ attention back to him. “I do not _fucking understand_ why it is such a crime for me to want the people I care for to stay alive.”

There is a kind of acuteness to the outburst that tugs at Thomas’ attention. He chances to prod it directly. “Is that what happened with your wife? I presume something must have happened to bring you to our door.”

Barlow rounds on him, savage with his grief. “ _Which time?_ ”

“The most recent,” Thomas rejoins calmly, leaning against the opposite post that demarks the edge of the cemetery. “James related the events that preceded his arrival at the plantation.”

Barlow laughs. “Of course he did. Well, what would you like to know? We couldn’t stay in Nassau long, the peace fell apart. It was never meant to last but a few years, and then all the supposed victors were back out on the street or at the end of a noose. We did have one last hurrah with the cache, though I had to put up with the accompaniment of,” and here his expression took on a fond exasperation, “the most _annoyingly brave_ youth you have ever met in your life. Little Jim. He was quite the adventurous lad—stupid, too. At one point I had to tie him to myself just to keep him alive.”

“To where did you travel, once your adventure was complete?”

“Bristol. We had an inn there.” Barlow scoffs, shaking his head. “She was a fucking _princess_ , and I made her a tavern wife. No wonder she hates me.”

“I doubt she does,” Thomas says, for it seems impossible in his mind for anyone to fully hate Barlow. Before Barlow can argue this point he asks: “What was your last hurrah with _her_?”

“Someone followed us home—mercenaries hired by the British. They didn’t even give a shit about the treasure, they wanted the slaves that Madi and I had rescued from Nassau. It was just a few that we could hide in the cellar of the tavern before we slipped them on board a ship bound for Africa, but somehow even that was too much. There had been a planned slave uprising discovered in Birmingham and the fucking nobility were keen to make examples of people. So their men bound Madi to a chair and they—they started chopping her fingers off one by one.” He laughs, high and awful. “They thought _I_ was the one in charge, and she the pawn they could threaten.”

He hugs the post against his chest. Thomas watches him a moment then asks softly, “How many fingers?”

“ _Three_ ,” Barlow gasps. “Three, before I stopped caring if she hated me or not, so long as she didn’t have to live the way I do. So long as she fucking _lived_.”

Again, Thomas is assailed by the memory of Savannah, when Captain Flint’s former associates had first caught up with them. After more than a decade of trauma it seems strange for that night in particular to have such a strong hold on him—and yet perhaps it makes perfect sense, for James had been so recently returned to him. Thomas suddenly had so much more to lose.

James must have shared his sentiments, because he’d begged for Thomas’ life, high and cracked, right up to the moment Rebekah had leapt from the shadows onto the back of the ringleader. Then he’d fought like a savage.

Barlow, though—Barlow walks with a crutch. He is not a great deal smaller than James, but Thomas has at least five inches on him. While he is no doubt a much better fighter than Thomas despite their difference in height, there is only so much physical mass that skill and spirit can overcome.

Helplessness is a special kind of torment, one that Thomas understands quite well.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Barlow doesn’t seem to hear; he’s staring out over the cemetery, leaning on the post. His hand grips it reflexively. “They took the Maroons out and butchered them right there in the street, then put Madi and I in chains. We managed to slip them while they were moving us to London to face trial…but Madi…she wouldn’t even look at me. She took the horse and left me without a crutch on the road to Southhampton.” His smile, when he turns it on Thomas, looks fit to cut glass. “I _crawled_ until I could find a stick big enough to support my weight.”

Thomas winces. That…does sound quite a bit like hatred.

Barlow snorts and leans against the post with a strangely satisfied expression. “May you never suffer any affection for me, Señor McGraw. There seems no faster path towards hating me.”

“That is…all too frequently the case.” Barlow makes an inquisitive face and Thomas sighs, wandering over to set a foot among the roots of the chestnut tree. “When first I began my forced convalescence in Bethlem, my sister Elizabeth visited quite frequently. As children we had been close; when I grew older and my politics became more radical, my father endeavored to separate us, but we exchanged letters. I was careful to keep my more… inconvenient views from the paper, in order to avoid my father’s censorship, the result of which became a kind of fantasy narrative in which I spent my time swanning about London doing not much at all of import. I wrote about the minutiae of my day, the microcosm of which told her absolutely nothing about _me_ as a person.

“I did not realize how wrong a conception she had of me until she began to visit me in the hospital. At first, I was desperately grateful and clung to her as a drowning man to a line thrown from shore. I even hoped that she might intercede on my behalf with Father…but though she expressed sincere concern for my well-being in that place, she heartily recommended that I submit to treatment and find a way to cut this _disease_ from myself. The milquetoast gentleman of our fantasy had clearly been taken advantage of and led astray by my associates, by James, by my harlot of a wife.

“In time, the visits that had seemed like my salvation became their own kind of torture and I found myself filled with hatred for her, even worse than the rage that I directed at my father. He, I understood: whatever filial affection his heart contained had long since withered, and he sought nothing short of my removal from this world, one way or another. Hating him was almost an afterthought. But she…I never once doubted that she loved me, or a version of me. A shade that she had created, unknowingly fed by my own words.

“It was her husband, finally, a man I had never met, who proved my savior—he secreted me on the transport to Nassau after my father’s death. Likely he merely wanted his wife to spend more time at home rather than in an asylum trying with the utmost earnestness to convince her brother that his love was an abomination.

“Chains forged from love are still chains. Perhaps if your wife cared for you less she might have forgiven you more, but when those we love most become our jailers, it becomes nearly impossible to forgive.”

Throughout this story, John has watched him in silence, his face drawn. Now he asks softly, “And is life such a prison? Is it such a wretched cell that to bar the doorway to certain death earns me nothing but hatred?”

“Life? No. For all the pain and drudgery I do believe that our time here is a gift. But life without _meaning_ —for some people that is the worst kind of prison. You kept your wife alive, but you denied her the right to choose her own meaning. I would ask you, for all our sakes, not to make the same mistake, here. I may not fully understand the import of Rebekah’s traditions, but she and I have survived some truly dark hours together, and the prospect of having _this_ again, whatever it is, helped her do so. I will not deny it to her now, and neither will I allow you to do the same.”

Barlow looks away, his mouth twisting. Softening his stance and his voice, Thomas chances a step closer. “If you had exiled yourself that first night, you know James would have gone after you. You must know that. And I would have gone after James, and Rebekah would have gone after me, and Marielena would—likely have stayed at home to tend the fire and wait for us all to come to our senses.”

Barlow chuckles a little, easing. When it is genuine instead of intended as a tool for manipulation, he has a bright, sweet smile. “She is the sensible sort.”

“The most of any in our house, upon that much I think we can agree.” Tilting his head to the side, Thomas watches Barlow wade through the dregs of his inner struggle. Even assured double over and presented with the best argument that Thomas can muster, he still doubts; that, it seems, comes from somewhere within his own breast.

 _When he speaks Spanish, he has no accent_ , Thomas thinks, and remembers the Marranos who had stirred up such debate in Whitehall when they settled in England, having fled expulsion and bloodshed in Iberia. It need not be that, of course; but it might be.

When Barlow finally meets his gaze, Thomas pushes such thoughts from his head and smiles. “Come. It’s getting dark.”

They proceed back down Ninth street in silence. Thomas feels his shoulders dropping out of their natural stance back to the stoop of Mr. McGraw, impoverished scholar of Addison Street. Beside him, Barlow is drawn and quiet; Thomas can’t tell if that’s an act, too, but he looks nothing like a dangerous pirate.

By the time they make it back to the house, the sun has gone down and Thomas’ eyelashes feel stiff with the cold. James is at the door as they walk up, clearly readying to leave; when he sees them, however, he slumps in relief and scowls. “I was just going to look for you. Get inside, for fuck’s sake.”

Rebekah is just taking down the menorah, while Marielena stuffs cloth around the edges of the windows. “Shut the door and put this along the bottom,” the latter instructs, shoving something into Thomas’ hands.

“Maria, this—are these my pantaloons?”

“You aren’t going to wear them to bed, are you? Then stuff that in the crack at the bottom of the door. I’ll wash them for you tomorrow, if God wills that we do not freeze to death tonight.”

-o-

They nearly do.

Thomas wakes, shivering. James has both arms and one leg wrapped around him. Ice coats the inside of their small window. When Thomas reaches back, James’ ear feels just as cold.

‘’James,” he says, trying not to let his teeth chatter, “we need to—”

“Fuck,” James grunts, then says, “I’ll get him, you get the women.”

They rise, careful to tuck the blankets over the warmth left behind. On his way toward the stairs Thomas pokes his head into the parlor. Barlow is a grey shape in the dark, huddled so close to the embers of the fire as to be nearly in them. When James calls his name softly, he stirs, lifting his head. “Captain?”

Upstairs, only Rebekah is awake. Her eyes glitter in the dark as she peers over Marielena’s shoulder. “Bring your blankets,” Thomas calls softly. “I doubt God will mind.”

Apparently they agree, for after Marielena rouses they both follow Thomas back down the stairs with their bedding, which they arrange on James and Thomas’ bed. The two women quickly climb in, taking the foot of the bed.

“James?” Thomas calls. His toes have gone numb.

James appears in the doorway, half-dragging Barlow. Even in the dark Thomas can read resistance in the lines of Barlow’s form, yet he says nothing as James pulls him into the room and shuts the door firmly behind them.

“Blankets,” Thomas says, deciding that officious briskness is the best path here. James hands over the meager covers under which Barlow has been sleeping and Thomas quickly spreads them over top of the others.

“Take your leg off and get in the fucking bed,” James orders Barlow. “We’ve done this before—when we first got here none of us bought enough blankets—”

“ _I_ did,” Marielena interjects, muffled by the blankets and Rebekah’s armpit. “ _You_ bought books.”

“—and we all slept in here more often than not. We can fit, only take off the peg so I don’t break my toe in the middle—”

“ _All right_ , Christ,” Barlow growls.

Thomas wriggles back to his side of the bed. Thank God, there’s a bit of warmth still left trapped by the sheets, and the room had come with a wool-stuffed mattress unlike the straw that Thomas had slept on at the plantation. He spares a wistful thought for the memory of his four-post down-stuffed bed in London, which could have fit five people quite comfortable—and _had_ , more than once.

James and Barlow are still not in bed. When Thomas pokes his nose over the top of the blanket in that direction, it appears that Barlow is still fumbling with the peg leg. Why the devil he was even wearing it at night in the first place, Thomas cannot imagine.

A murmur from James: “Do you need—?”

“I have it,” Barlow snaps in a low voice, and Thomas can _hear_ how badly he’s shivering in just three syllables. Then: “The fucking leather is stiff, I can’t—”

James says nothing else, only slides around Barlow to kneel in front of him.

And oh, Thomas wishes to God that he had a candle or a lantern right now so that he could see this better. As it is, they are merely dark shapes against a white wall: James, kneeling and working over the straps of the wooden peg in the dark, easing it off; John Barlow, standing over him and leaning against the wall, his head bowed. The process takes only moments and then there’s a clink of metal buckles as James stands with the peg in his hand. He carefully sets it next to the bed before he offers Barlow his arm.

Then at last they are all tucked in underneath a considerably larger pile of blankets. Rebekah and Marielena lie curled against the footboard with their heads on one pillow; James, Barlow, and Thomas rest against the headboard. Their nine legs tangle together underneath the covers and Thomas fully anticipates a heel to the groin at some point in the night. It is not exceptionally comfortable but it is a great deal warmer.

He falls back asleep to the drip of melting ice from the windowsill.

When next he opens his eyes, the ceiling is washed with white light. From experience he knows that the world outside will be almost blinding with fresh snow. Somewhere, someone is breaking ice; the loud _crack-crack_ is likely what woke him.

Their room is quiet except for the sound of breathing. Marielena snores faintly; she lies with her head tucked under Rebekah’s chin, both their eyes closed and their faces peaceful. One of their feet rests on Thomas’ thigh, just short of indelicacy and pain. Still, he cannot help but smile down at them.

Something moves in the corner of his eye. James lies next to him, between Thomas and Barlow, and his fingers rest on top of the blankets over his own chest.

So does a strand of curly black hair, which James is very gently rubbing between his fingers.

There is very little of James’ body that Thomas does not find beautiful. From the lines that curl on either side of his mouth like closed parentheses to the soft places that have started to grow low on his belly and around his hips, Thomas thinks it the loveliest of any form he has ever seen. Especially his fingers. When James had returned from the sea he’d had thick callouses and scars, knuckles swollen from fighting. These days his injuries come from hammers, in the form of bruises underneath his fingernails, and the regular scatter of wood splinters. They have always reflected his life, both outer and inner: in times of distress they jump and twitch, reaching to turn rings that he no longer wears.

At the moment, Thomas cannot think of anything more erotic than the sight of James’ fingers moving through John Barlow’s hair. His forefinger crooks and his thumb strokes along the grain of the hair, following a curl, before lifting and returning to the start of its path.

When Thomas moves ever so slightly, however, the fingers still.

Still confining his movements so that not even his hair moves against the pillow, Thomas seeks James’ gaze with his own. At first, he is denied: James looks at the ceiling, at the window, even closes his eyes. Thomas resorts to pinching him, which earns him an indignant glare, but that quickly melts in the full force of the emotions roiling beneath.

Ever since that first day, Thomas has known that James loves John Barlow—John _Silver_. Now, lying on his back in bed between them, James lets Thomas see how _much_ , and it should not come as any surprise, really. Thomas has never met anyone else who loved as deeply and totally as James: at first, he’d imagined the relationship between James and Miranda to be wholly unique, and felt both happy and proud to have brought someone with such depth of feeling to her company. While Thomas himself could provide affection and companionship, she deserved to experience true ardor.

Then, in a moment of reckless greed, Thomas had kissed him and, in doing so, cast a light on dusty rooms within James whose doors had likely never been touched, even by her.

Now he knows that neither he nor Miranda were extraordinary in any way, and this, this mad bottomless well that is always pouring forth and never filled, is _just how James loves_.

And James loves John.

Not more than he loves Thomas, or more than he loved Miranda…but different nonetheless. Thomas doubts that he inspires the same kind of pain that he sees now in James’ eyes, or at least he _hopes_ he does not.

Marielena’s voice breaks the silence. “John, John, wake up.”

From the other side of James comes a trill and a shuffle of movement. Thomas can’t quite see him, which means that Barlow must be burrowed into James’ side as tight as he can go.

“John, your foot stinks. You are going to let me wash your sock today, or I will strip it from you by force.”

Barlow laughs softly and James’ eyes drop away from Thomas. On his chest, his fingers have retreated into a fist, as far from the lock of curly black hair as they can get without obviously shifting around on the bed.

Getting out of the warm bed appeals to none of them, but they cannot hibernate like bears. More’s the pity: there will be other nights like this before the winter is through, and the winters last long, here. At least they have established that they can all fit in the bed.

They hurry into clothes, bundling themselves in as many layers as possible. It does not escape Thomas’ notice that James wordlessly drapes his spare waistcoat over the end of the bed, nor that after a moment, Barlow picks it up and puts it on.

In the parlor, the porridge has frozen. The influx of Barlow’s money means they need suffer no more scrapple; instead, Marielena very happily lays thick slices of bacon in a pan. “Will you not have some?” she asks Rebekah, who shakes her head. Marielena sighs over the sizzling meat. “I love God, but if He commanded me to no longer eat bacon, I confess I would ask why.”

“It is not a command,” Rebekah replies. “It is…a test of obedience. And many do ask why.”

“And how does your god answer that question?” Thomas asks, though as he does so he cuts his eyes sideways to Barlow, who is frowning as he tears pieces of bread from the day-old loaf.

“He does not.” Rebekah’s mouth rises in a sideways smile. “That does not stop anyone asking.”

There is a moment’s distraction while James pours them all tea, during which time the bread crusts in Barlow’s hands get progressively smaller and smaller. Thomas strikes up conversation with Marielena about a window garden that she has planned, the cultivation of which she has secured his promise to support.

When Marielena puts bacon on his plate, however, Barlow looks at it then, in a rush, turns to Rebekah and says, “Hanukkah isn’t even one of the high holy days, what does it matter so much to you?”

The fledgling conversation dies. Slowly Rebekah sets down her teacup. So far as Thomas knows, it’s the first time that Barlow has acknowledged even knowing the first thing about the Jewish faith. Thomas carefully sips his tea and avoids glancing towards that end of the table; James, of course, is openly watching, a worried frown creasing his brow. Marielena rolls her eyes in exasperation and goes to stir the porridge.

“It matters,” Rebekah says, “because…because _they_ light their candles. They drape their branches everywhere, they sing and walk through the streets. No one tells them to put out their lights, why should we?”

“I confess it has been a long time for me, but from little I recall at my mother’s knee, jealousy and anger do not seem the best motivators for worship.”

“It is not worship. I…do not believe any longer in El Dio.” Here, her faltering voice betrays an inner conflict, but then she continues. “It is for my family. _They_ believed, and I honor them by honoring the day.”

“And you think your family would have desired you to jeopardize your safety to properly honor their memory? Why take the risk at all?”

“Why take _you_ in?” Rebekah counters. “You are a risk, but we do it because James cares for you. Why not send James to bed with Maria? The love of every person in this house is a risk. Why not all of us sew our eyes and our mouths shut, and never seek happiness, because it is too much _risk_? Is that a life worth living?”

The soup spoon thunks dully against the side of the pot. Thomas glances worriedly at Marielena, but she has her back to them all and after a moment she resumes stirring.

Barlow presses his lips together for a moment then drops his eyes. “No,” he murmurs. “No, I suppose not. But is this as important to you as Marielena? As Thomas is to James? In light of those gambles would it not seem wisest to _pick your fucking battles_?”

Rebekah looks away, her jaw tight. She says, “I had hoped that this was something you and I could share. It has been a long time since I have seen another Jew, much less kept home with one. I am afraid that I have forgotten some of the prayers, and the taste of chamin, and my father’s face. Everything they hated about us, they are slowly killing not by killing _us_ —but by making us too frightened to remember that which made us different. Made us Jews.”

She waggles her hands a little after she finishes speaking, and Thomas _aches_ for her. If Barlow mocks her now, he might truly find himself in the snow—but there is not an ounce of contempt or humor on Barlow’s face. Instead he appears almost stricken.

They sit in silence for some time, while Marielena dishes up the porridge. She, too, seems pale, and when she makes to bring their bowls over, James tips his head to catch her gaze. Whatever Rebekah had hoped James might communicate to her, it’s clearly already been said, for all James has to do is give her a meaningful gaze and Marielena’s shoulders slump, the proclamation she imagines handed down to her by God himself slipping from her again. It may yet return, but Thomas is always happy to see it removed.

At the other end of the table, Barlow slowly, slowly sits forward in his chair and reaches out, taking hold of the plate in front of him. Rebekah’s eyes cut sideways, watching as he tilts the dish, dumping the thick slices of bacon onto James’ plate.

Setting his now-empty plate down again, Barlow slumps back in his chair. He does not meet Rebekah’s eyes, as if for him, too, meeting her gaze would prove painful; but he says quietly, “Don’t put up la menorá tonight. We’ll…find something else.”

Rebekah keeps her eyes on the floor. Even through her tears, she smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> -Colonial Philadelphia was known for its rowhouses, you can read all about them and also examine the different layouts here: http://colonialphiladelphia.blogs.wm.edu/the-city/  
> -The American Weekly Mercury that Thomas writes for was one of the first newspapers in the colonies. You can read excerpts from it here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.32000000480295;view=1up;seq=24  
> -The young Benjamin whom Thomas meets in Thomas Denham’s printing shop is none other than Benjamin Franklin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Denham  
> -I have fudged the date of the consecration of Mikveh Israel Cemetery by about 15 years, but Philadelphia was actually a haven for Jews due to the high prevalence of Quakers in the area. Quakers are pretty chill about other religions. William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, believed that religion and policy were two separate things; as a result, Pennsylvania was the only colony that did not have an official church, though Christians were still the only people who could hold public office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikveh_Israel_Cemetery http://www.pennsburymanor.org/history/william-penn-and-american-history/


End file.
